Biplist is a pure Python library for reading and writing Mac OS X binary property list files (via Dave Dribin). I’ve been doing this via PyObjC, which works fine except that it can lead to lots of bridging overhead if you’ll be processing the plist objects from Python. I could also imaging this being useful for code that runs on a non-Mac Web server.
On Snow Leopard, you can use the DevMode default to make HelpViewer use a regular window (via Joe Kissell).
Martin Pilkington has a great review of Xcode 4 as well as a guide for where to find Xcode 3 features in it. One change not mentioned is that Xcode 4 drops SDK support for developing applications that run on Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. (Depending on which libraries you need to link with, primitive 10.5 support may be possible using deployment targets.) Xcode 3 can still develop for those systems, but it probably will not be able to run on 10.7 or develop for 10.7 APIs from 10.6. So Apple is strongly encouraging developers to drop PowerPC support and support only Snow Leopard and Lion going forward. This was to be expected, although Apple is obsoleting older systems more quickly than in the past. I’m sure there’s lots of code that could, without much trouble, run on these systems if there were tool support.
Update: Part 3 looks at Xcode 4 schemes.
